Dissecting Sunflowers is cool!

For gathering time we put out some sunflowers that were drying out and getting ready to display their seeds. Some of the kids spent time picking off the smaller flowers and pulling out the seeds from the flower head.  If you get some home you can plant them now-or wait till spring.  We have been told that they can spend the winter in the ground and still sprout when the weather warms up.  Let us know if they do sprout in May or June!

It was fascinating to watch them work on their fine motor skills-pulling out the small seeds with their fingers and placing them carefully into a paper cup.  As they dissected the flowers we game names to the parts of the flowers. Disk flowers and ray flowers and seeds, stem and leaves.  We even pretended to be sunflower seeds sprouting during circle time with one hand going down into the soil and another reaching for the sun high in the sky. As we rose from our seated position to standing-pretty soon we were doing a yoga pose, tree pose-but making it into a sunflower pose with sunflowers coming out our hands.  Pretending to be part of nature is so fun.

On Tuesday the yellow group went on a long hike all around the park on a trail even I had never been on.  Logan found a cool log for us to have snack on-since he lives close by and knows all the trails well.  As we walked we counted trees - to see where we should stop next.  We found a stream and bridge that was new, a cool hollowed out log and finally the horse corral.  I asked the kids which way was the way back to lunch-and they all knew.  Smart kids!  Again, it was unanimous!

The blue group had stayed and played next to the stream the whole time we were on our big walk.  Funny, because the class before it was the opposite-the yellow group enjoyed the stream and didn't want to leave and the blue group did a big hike.  We just keep shaking it up here at TOP!

Thank you for sending your children in plenty of layers.  I had one child announce on Tuesday-"Teacher Ann-I have 3 pairs of pants on!"  I told her "So do I!"  Unfortunately I didn't have 2 pink pair and a purple pair like she did.  (wish I did!)  We will continue to take off layers or put then on as needed.